Airside Driving Simulator: A Story of Progress

One century was enough for man to unfold his wings and soar across the planet from one side to the other. During that short period of time, we have gone from those first experiences which allowed a handful of privileged people to "travel" by plane to the millions of flights and passengers that move around the globe with ease today. And the fact of the matter is that air transport is essential today in the development of society.

Each minute of the day –in the morning and afternoon– there are around 11,000 planes in the air traversing the planet, and more than 3 billion passenger take flight each year. And almost all of them use an airport. In this day and age, as we look at our e-tickets on our mobile devices, take the moving sidewalks around the terminals, and pick up our luggage we probably don't stop to think about the scale of the operations that are undertaken for planes to function comfortably, safely, and on time for passengers.

Alongside the growth of air transport, there has also been the growth and evolution of airport management and of the operational services required thereby. From essential operational services to handling services, there exists a perfect network of logistic actions that are undertaken daily at airports.

A clear example of evolution in airport management can be seen in AENA. This is a leading company on the global level in terms of airport operations, reaching in 2019 a record income of more than 4.5 billion euros –a 4.2% increase from the prior year– and transporting 275 million passengers in total when considering all the Spanish airports.

AENA operates 45 airports and 2 heliports in Spain and participates through its subsidiary “Aena Internacional” in the management of 15 airports in Europe and America, amongst which are the London Luton Airport and the six airports belonging to the Northeast Group of Brazil.  This makes it the first airport operator in the world in terms of number of passengers.

As the president of AENA, Maurici Lucena, explained a few weeks ago, in the post-COVID era, AENA has responsibly established itself as a key player in Spain with a quick and instinctive reaction that has allowed its finances to remain safe. Aware of the ripple effect that it has on many other companies, AENA recently confirmed that it would provide approximately 1.2 billion euros throughout 2020 and 2021 to improve airport infrastructure.

Along those lines of progress, we have the satisfaction to announce that LANDER has recently signed an agreement with AENA to supply 13 Training Centres with Airside Driving Simulators, distributed throughout the main Spanish airports for driving training and assessment for workers who are in charge of all types of vehicles on the airport apron, taxiway, and runway. The aim is to complement the training tools currently offered to teach drivers, including modern simulators that fully and realistically allow for operational situations inherent to this collective to be recreated.

Through this new project, LANDER will embark upon a 10-year relationship with AENA in which we hope to contribute with our know-how in land transport simulation and, especially, learn from the experience of AENA in the sphere of airport operations.

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